I believe Sheriff Lewis and I have genuine mutual respect for one another. Just recently, we were together during a Citizens Academy class at the Law Enforcement Center (mentioned in my Substack), talking with the class about how the media loves to turn routine governance into some kind of dramatic showdown.
We are both elected leaders doing the jobs we were each chosen to do, and sometimes those jobs put us on opposite sides of a budget ledger, even when we share the exact same goal.
A safe, thriving Greenville County.
I also want to be crystal clear before we go any further, that nothing in this newsletter is an attack on the Sheriff, his deputies, or this agency.
What it is, is the full picture. The data, the context, and the honest conversation that you deserve to have.
Why I’ve Been Quiet & Why I’m Speaking Now
For the past several weeks, a narrative has been circulating in the media and on social platforms, suggesting that Greenville County Council doesn’t support law enforcement.
That has been genuinely hard to sit with.
But the discipline of governance means you don’t fire back with half a story. You wait until you have all the verified information in hand.
Well, that time is now!
First: How Our Government Actually Works & Why This Situation Is Different
To understand the full context of what’s happening, you need to understand how Greenville County is legally structured, because this isn’t just policy preference.
This is state law.
Under the South Carolina Home Rule Act, Greenville County operates under a Council-Administrator form of government.
That means:
- County Council hires a professional County Administrator to serve as the chief executive officer of county government.
- The Administrator’s job, written into his contract and required by state law, is to assess every single county department, evaluate what the county actually brings in, and construct a balanced budget proposal that works for the whole county.
- Council’s job is to review that proposal, hold public workshops and hearings, and make responsible policy adjustments before a final vote.
This structure exists to ensure that no single department can crowd out another, that every employee across every function of county government is considered fairly, and that budget decisions are made with the complete picture in front of us, not just one piece of it.
The vast majority of county departments have no choice but to work within this framework. EMS, Emergency Management, Forensics, Roads, the Detention Center, and others submit their data to the Administrator, make their case through proper channels, and trust the process.
They do this quietly, often with very real needs of their own.
What many residents may not realize is that several other independently elected constitutional officers, officials who would have every legal right to take a different approach, have also chosen to work within this same framework voluntarily.
All of the following have connections to the Greenville County budget:
Scott Case, County Auditor
Allen Hodges, County Treasurer
Tim Nanney, Register of Deeds
Jay Gresham, Clerk of Court
Cindy Crick, Circuit Solicitor
Mindy Lipinski, Circuit Public Defender
Chadwicke Groover, Probate Judge
Mike Ellis, County Coroner
Each of these officials have staff with real needs.
Each of them has a legitimate case they could make. They have even voiced some of those to myself, but in the proper manner, and I want to say publicly that I have deep appreciation for the way they engage with this process. That kind of institutional cooperation makes it possible for Council to do its job fairly, for everyone, and it’s much easier to advocate for a potential path forward!
My commitment is simple: every department, every office, and every employee in this county deserves to be heard through a process that gives them a fair shot. That is what the Administrator framework is designed to do, and protecting that process is part of protecting the people who depend on it.
What the 2027 Budget Actually Says
Let me give you the real numbers, because the numbers tell a very different story than the headlines.
Public Safety is Priority #1 in our budget. Full stop!
- We have allocated over $88.1 million for Law Enforcement Services. That is a 4.10% increase over last year.
- That single department represents more than 30% of our entire General Fund.
- While general county employees are proposed for a 2.5% cost-of-living raise, public safety staff are proposed for 5%.
- To fund that extra 2.5% specifically for our deputies, the Administrator had to reduce every other county employee’s COLA (Cost Of Living Adjustment) by 0.5%.
Real county workers in other departments took a smaller raise so our deputies could get a bigger one!
We are also funding the following:
The “Defunding” Math: A $12 Million Reality Check
The Sheriff’s request for a flat, across-the-board $12,000 raise per employee, regardless of rank, position, or title, would cost approximately $12 million annually, every single year.
That is not a one-time expense. It is a permanent, recurring commitment that would need to be funded in every budget cycle going forward.
To meet this request, we have to be honest about what that would actually require. The public campaign that you can view below, suggests we have “allocated” money elsewhere that should rightfully go to deputies.
Let’s look at what that money actually is and where it actually comes from.
Greenlink Transit Authority (GTA): $3,500,000
This figure has remained completely flat for three consecutive budget years (FY2025, FY2026, FY2027)
Additionally, eliminating Greenlink would immediately strand thousands of local workers who rely on the bus to get to their jobs, as well as the elderly and disabled seeking life-saving medical care. When a community loses its transit system, that burden doesn’t disappear, it shifts directly onto our first responders, who would see an immediate increase in welfare checks, pedestrian incidents, and emergency calls for the very populations we just left without a ride.
GADC (Economic Development): $3,170,000
This figure is worth examining closely because the Sheriff has publicly referenced this funding as if it represents a discretionary choice by Council to fund economic development over deputies. The reality is that this money comes from the General Fund and is kept stable to aggressively drive industrial tax base growth.
The GADC is the very engine that attracts the industries generating the expanded tax base that funds a large portion of everything else in this county, including every deputy’s salary.
Defunding the organization that grows our tax base to cover a sudden pay demand would be the financial equivalent of cutting down the tree to get to the fruit.
The Road Program: $27.5 million
This allocation lives in a Special Revenue Fund. By state law, these infrastructure funds are strictly restricted and cannot legally be redirected into General Fund payroll.
It’s also important to note that this council was the first in a decade to get funding for roads to this level.
So where does the remaining money come from?
Taxes……..
I know you didn’t want to read that last part, because I didn’t even want to write it!
A Word on Taxes, Because You Deserve to Know Where I Stand
Major tax increases should not be decided by a simple majority of elected officials. They should be decided by the people who have to pay them.
I was here four years ago when Greenville County saw the largest tax increase in its history. I will not be a part of that happening again, especially through political pressure and partial data.
If the day comes when the case for a tax increase is honest, transparent, and backed by every number laid bare for every resident to see, then let the people decide at the ballot box.
That is how I believe it should work.
Deputy Pay
I serve on the Board of Directors for the South Carolina Association of Counties, the very organization whose wage survey is being cited publicly as evidence of a pay crisis. I know what that data measures, how it’s collected, and what it doesn’t capture.
So let me give you an honest answer, not a political one.
The SCAC wage survey is a legitimate tool. It is county-specific, and I have no issue with its methodology for what it was designed to do. The problem is what it doesn’t capture, it records flat base rates only. It does not account for scheduled overtime, post-academy pay bumps, shift differentials, or specialized incentives like incentives for education.
For agencies like ours, where built-in overtime is a structural part of how compensation actually works, that omission significantly understates what employees actually take home.
Using base rates alone to rank compensation across agencies produces a misleading picture, and that is not what the survey was designed for.
So when you look at that ranking, you are not seeing a clean, apples-to-apples comparison of what law enforcement employees across South Carolina actually earn.
31st in Pay?
The “31st in pay” ranking takes that incomplete foundation and compounds the problem further. The Sheriff’s internal study added municipal police departments to the SCAC county data. I do not know where that municipal data came from, what methodology was used to gather it, or how those departments were selected. What I can tell you is that stacking a 700-deputy county sheriff’s office against city police departments of varying sizes, structures, and budget obligations, and then ranking them together as if they are comparable, is not sound data analysis.
A municipal police department does not fund a county jail. It does not run a county-wide EMS system. It does not maintain thousands of miles of unincorporated roads or support a regional court system.
Putting them in the same ranking list and presenting the result as a crisis is not a fair comparison.
So what does our compensation actually look like when you account for the full picture?
State figures list our base minimum at $51,447. But that number does not reflect how our deputies are actually compensated. Our pay structure is built around 85.75-hour pay periods, which include scheduled overtime as a standard, built-in feature of the job, not a bonus, not an extra, but a structural part of how compensation works at the agency.
When you account for that structure, the numbers look significantly different:
- In 2025, the average new hire base salary was $57,902.
- When standard, scheduled overtime is included, the overtime that is built directly into every deputy’s regular work schedule……
Actual starting compensation rises to $65,773.
That is not a cherry-picked figure. That is what most of our deputies realistically take home from day one, based on the way our pay periods are structured. It is more than $9,000 higher than the base number being cited publicly, and it reflects the true cost and true value of the compensation package this county provides to the men and women who protect it.
Our independent county-wide compensation study explicitly places the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office in the Top Tier of competitiveness statewide when total compensation is properly accounted for.
Does that mean there is zero room for improvement?
No!
It means we owe every taxpayer decisions grounded in what the complete data actually shows, not a ranking built on measuring numbers that were never designed to be compared the way they are being compared.
On Retention: What the Data Shows
We have heard that deputies are leaving in significant numbers over pay. Our independent compensation study tells a more nuanced story.
Voluntary, undesirable turnover, employees leaving on their own who are eligible for rehire, for Sheriff’s Office employees mirrors the general county average and reflects longer tenure than most other departments.
The Official Budget Process Starts This Week
This may be the most important point of all.
No final decisions have been made.
No votes have been taken.
No options have been removed from the table.
That makes this entire public campaign, the media appearances, the public/social media pressure, and the emotionally charged narrative, very premature.
And it is exactly the kind of pressure that shouldn’t drive $12 million recurring decisions.
Looking at all the current data, I am not sure this Council can responsibly go beyond what the Administrator has already proposed for public safety without consequences elsewhere. This will be the second consecutive budget in which this Council has gone above and beyond for law enforcement, outpacing every other department.
Because of that, future budgets will also likely need to shift focus toward the departments that have waited.
Our detention officers, EMS crews, the Magistrate office, and all general county employees deserve market-competitive wages too.
A Certified Deputy starting with a Bachelor’s degree earns $56,591.
For comparison:
- A Zoning Enforcement Officer earns 18.5% less at hire, and due to the specialized Step Plan, that gap expands to 29.4% less by Year 5.
- An Animal Control Officer earns 13.6% less at hire, widening to 25.2% less by Year 5.
Supporting our deputies cannot mean leaving everyone else behind.
That’s not support.
That’s imbalance.
My Commitment to You
We are going to work through this budget the right way. With real data, open workshops, and decisions made for all 550,000+ residents of Greenville County, not just the loudest voices in the room, in the media, or online.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for trusting me with this responsibility.
Sources used in this newsletter include the SC Association of Counties Annual Wage Survey, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the SC Department of Public Safety. All budget figures are drawn from the proposed 2027 Greenville County budget and the county’s independent compensation study. You can find them below!
Verify the Facts for Yourself: Sources & Further Reading
True transparency means giving you the tools to review the data, listen to the interviews, and make up your own mind. Below are the direct links to various media broadcasts, news articles, and official state and federal data sources:
FOX Carolina News Interview
WSPA 7News Broadcast
Yahoo News / Print Coverage: Read the syndicated report covering the public push for Sheriff’s Office employee salary increases.
98.9 The Word (Audacy): Listen to the talk radio dialogue from the Sheriff’s appearance on Bill Frady.
Official Government Data Sources
South Carolina Association of Counties (SCAC): Explore the official statewide baseline metrics used in municipal research via the SCAC Annual Wage Survey and Research Database.
US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA): Review regional economic indicators, compound growth rates, and wage statistics directly through the BEA Data Portal.
South Carolina Department of Public Safety (SCDPS): Learn more about the restricted state grant guidelines, compliance standards, and school security distributions at the SCDPS Official Site.
Final Thoughts For Now
True Council leadership requires making the difficult, balanced decisions necessary to protect taxpayers both physically and financially.
As the Sheriff said himself, there is a distinct difference between working to get elected, and doing the actual work required of the job once you are sworn in.
In my opinion, standing firm, analyzing the data, and making the responsible calls to safeguard our county’s financial future, even when it means navigating a highly public debate, is exactly what doing the work looks like.
We are building a Greenville County that is safe, solvent, and sustainable.
That requires a steady hand, institutional fairness, and an unyielding commitment to the facts over politics.
Thank you for your continued trust and support!
As always, I hope you and your families have a blessed and prosperous week in Greenville County!
